Features

The mother of wild rides

The local Squamish tribe call the site of the Olympic bobsleigh track in
Whistler the Wild Spirit Place and by the end of the Winter Olympics a few
of the riders, sliders and lugers will understand why. With a total vertical
drop of nearly 150m and a maximum gradient of 20%, the 1,450m Whistler
sliding track is, by the admission of people who know no fear, the fastest,
most ferocious circuit in the world.

“It’s a proper sliding track,” says Andi Schmid, coach of the Great Britain
bob skeleton team. “It’s like the tracks when I used to race. You need to be
focused and do your steering.”

Her first encounter with the track left Shelley Rudman with an unusual sense
of frustration, almost bewilderment. Buffeted by the G-forces exerted on the
head and body by speeds of more than 90mph, she had no feel of where she was
in